Small Business Savings Tips - Part 8

The most effective way to bring both bring in new customers and to retain existing customers is to go online. It used to be fairly difficult and expensive to start an e-commerce site, but if you check out sites like Yahoo Merchant Solutions you'll see that you can save 35% on their merchant solutions packages.

It can be fairly difficult (and not to mention time consuming) to find the right web hosting service, set up your website and shopping cart, and integrate it with your inventory. Yahoo makes it really easy now to e-commerce store up and running in no time for a minimal cost.

If you have a small business and are just starting out, try the Yahoo merchant starter package. It costs just $25.97 a month for the first 3 months. After that, the cost is just $39.95 a month. It makes for a low barrier to entry for e-commerce. You cost is fixed and with it, you get a free domain name with email and unlimited storage, secure shopping cart integration with credit card and Paypal processing, powerful and easy to use store design software, and more. The cost of payment processing ($20 per month w/ Authorize.net) and e-commerce web hosting (costs $7.49 a month with Yahoo Web Hosting) alone just about makes up for the monthly cost of the complete package with Yahoo Merchant Solutions.

If you do not already have an e-commerce site then I urge you to do so. It doesn't cost much and is not nearly as intimidating as it used to be. It's a sure fire way to both retain your current customers as well as gain new ones.

P.S. make your payments automatic with your American Express card and get an additional 5% off the monthly cost.